Our store has 3 security guards who are scheduled on a regular basis. Sometimes they have a temporary security guard come in when the regulars aren't there. Other times, actually, most of the times now, they hire a police officer to stand at the doors where the security guards would normally be.
I'll say this, I do the Uscan 2nd shift all week, every week, and I'll say that both the security guards and the police officers are only ever at the door about 50% of the time. The other times, they're off doing gawd knows what.
I personally believe if they had a guard/officer standing at the door 100% of the time, then a lot of the theft at the Uscan would be eliminated. I can't watch all the robots every second of the time when I'm busy helping a customer of fetching cigarettes for one. And when a customer does walk off without paying, then I can quickly point them out to the guard/officer and then they can do their job and catch the thief.
I had a customer walk out without paying and there was no guard or manager in sight. So when a manager finally arrived, like 5 minutes later, I told them that a customer walked out without paying. And they literally said these words to me, "well, there's nothing we can do about it now." And I'm like, wtf do you have the cameras for then? Like really nothing?
That was when I just stopped caring. Obviously the store has their own way of dealing with thieves. I don't understand why the guard/officer isn't there at the door 100% of the time, but I'm sure they have their reasons. Not my place to worry about that. I'll just stick to doing my job of pushing buttons and dealing with frustrated customers telling me "but I don't need help" when the machine says "help is on the way."
We now have a NIGHT TIME security officer. Comes in around 4-5 pm.
Daytime: ONLY and ONLY IF we get hit up with a substantial loss of formula, medicines, or liquor will we be allowed to have a security officer come in. (Hey, upper management in corporate has to save money. Heaven help them that they have to pay $400-500 to save thousands of dollars per day)
Just one Friday and Saturday nights and our store is in a bad neighborhood too. Loss Prevention doesnt care. Hell, they let a man off with a warning who had over $500 of meat in his backpack. He was a common occurrence that toon months to get LP to even come in to do anything about.
My last store was in Dayton and had a security guard that worked 4pm-12am (closing time) most nights but he was mostly worthless, he would usually be hanging out talking to employees or sitting in the break room.
My current store is in a smaller town and we don't have a security guard here. I don't think there's as much shoplifting here but I'm sure there's some everywhere.
